Nancy Tellem at Wrap Power Women Breakfast: Microsoft Is Aiming for a ‘Game of Thrones’ (Video)

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TheWrap’s keynote speaker at its fourth annual Power Women Breakfast says Microsoft’s new studio has the ambition and the means to create landmark programming

Nancy Tellem, Microsoft’s new president of entertainment and digital media, said on Wednesday she has the means and the ambition to make a “Game of Thrones”-like series for the new studio backed by the technology giant.

“I have the ambition” to make a show as grand as “Game of Thrones,” said the former president of CBS entertainment at TheWrap‘s Power Women Breakfast at the Montage in Beverly Hills.

“That, to me, was greatest testament to how wonderful television can be and how engrossed people are and committed – and it was a social experience,” she said.

And, she said smiling, Microsoft’s budget was “enough for me to do my job, let’s just say.”

Tellem made the remarks to a group of 100 top women executives at the TheWrap‘s fourth annual Power Women breakfast during an interview with Wrap editor in chief Sharon Waxman.

Tellem left CBS in 2010, and was hired a year ago by Microsoft to head a new initiative to create high quality content, one of many forays into content by technology companies. She described how difficult it was to transition from a career in broadcast to the new world of digital.

She found that at Microsoft. “I loved that within this big company they had these entrepreneurs,” Tellem said. “They see the potential of things that don’t even enter my mind … it’s a different type of creativity.”

Not being bound by the constraints of a 22-episode season or even show length and with the technology to engage the viewer through the Xbox platform allows Tellem and her team to “focus on the content itself” and then way viewers can “share that experience.”

Tellem said she expects that Microsoft will begin rolling out its new shows — which will range from sports programs to scripted series — as soon as the spring. She says they have not decided whether to release the episodes over time or put them all out at once, like Netflix.

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Asked about binge viewing, Tellem said she was not sure if Microsoft would release all its content at once, observing that interactivity was more the distinctive purview of Microsoft.

The breakfast also featured the four recent honorees of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award: Najiba Ayubi of Afghanistan, Edna Machirori of Zimbabwe, Bopha Phorn of Cambodia and Nour Kelze of Syria.

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Kelze was unable to leave in Syria, but Ayubi, Machirori and Phorn were on hand to speak about their experiences as female journalists in countries that were not necessarily receptive to working women or journalists in general.

Ayubi, now managing director of the Killid Group, a nonprofit media initiative, spoke of how there was a time when her country, run by the Taliban, had no media to speak of. “We had no radio, no TV, no newspaper — nothing,” she said. Though being a journalist in Afghanistan has not been easy for Ayubi – she’s been threatened by public officials several times in her 25-year career and state-run media has published false defamatory reports about her – she’s appreciative that there’s now at least an opportunity to inform the world about her country at all.

The event raised money for the IWMF which is seeking $100,000 for an emergency response fund to help the many female journalists around the world who are stuck in positions much like the four honorees.

Bank of America sponsored the event for the second year in a row, along with Naturepedic.

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